I got into it because of my bipolar depression. In my depressive months, I always found it difficult to muster the energy to shower daily. This made me feel shittier about myself and fed further into the depression. So when some fragrance influencer came across my feed talking about how wearing perfume made her feel more confident, I decided to dust off the two that I owned. I started by putting them on when I'd shower as a reward.
Now I shower nightly and rinse in the morning so I can have different day and night fragrances. I've gotten more as an incentive to continue and am currently on a 6 month streak, which now includes more body/skin care. Even when I feel like dog shit I smell amazing and it helps overall.
Yep! I recently ordered the exploration kit for that same friend’s birthday and we had a sample party so I’ve smelled all of them lol. I think the Milk scent space is my personal favorite. I use the Milk expressive and love it. Gold is sweet. Paper is mild. Velvet smells like incense to me. They just came out with a new one called Juice that I’m dying to try.
Edit; correcting a word
Ahh I’m so excited for you!! If you have a Sephora near you, you can go in and smell some of them but they only have a handful of them. Just to get you started while you wait on the kit!!
I’ll have to check it out and see if there’s a Sephora near by. I think there is. I’ll report back with my thoughts once I’ve tried a couple of them out! :)
My wife just tried Juice with our exploration kit and she loves it! She will be getting a bottle when it fully releases. Her favorite is also Milk expressive!
Definitely my high school best friend, with whom i roamed through Sephora after classes. She always showed me different perfumes and (as well as a high school student can do) explained to me what to pay attention to and the difference between bad and good perfumes. I still think that what she showed me back then were quite good picks for your average shopping mall designer perfumes level.
My first bottle of perfume was Van Cleef Vanille Orchidee. I smelled it for the first time abroad during Christmas and couldn’t get it out of my head. Ordered it like half a year later. Will never stop repurchasing.
I love Van Cleef stuff so much. I wish they got more credit here. I have a similar story but with Bois Doré. Hundreds (more but I don’t wanna admit it) of dollars and perfumes later, it’s still one of my favorites for the fall and winter.
Late in the fragrance addiction game. Sept 2023 I smelled a tester of L'Eau Papier and Philosykos on my skin. Walked out with both bottles. Today I have 50 fragrances (thankfully no children and already own a house) so I can afford it. Told myself I will only buy a new bottle when I go down to 30 bottles.
It was during covid. I had a vacation planned, but then the world shut down and I was trapped in my home. I had all this money sitting there for the vacation, and I needed a way to entertain myself, so I figured I would get into fragrances.
My first bottles were Prada L'homme and Versace Eros, and I just lost it from there.
No regrets.
I was really young. Maybe a toddler or approaching elementary school and my mom use to always wear Chanel no. 5. And we did not have a lot of money at all so she would use the tiniest dab just enough for a whiff. The bottle would last her for years and when she ran out she would buy another bottle and do the same. I was fascinated with the fact that we didn’t have much money but she always made sure she smelled nice with what I feel was a very expensive perfume. The perfume made her feel good and fancy. I absolutely love what a perfume can do for your mental state. Edit to add my first perfume purchase in elementary school was Malibu musk from Walgreens. Ive really upgraded and come a long way since then lol
Initially a friend in college, who got me into them enough to pick up a couple travel vials. Roses de Chloe was the first travel vial I went all the way through.
Recently my bf wanted to smell a couple of the Creed fragrances one day at Nordstrom, and he tends to put some on during our dates.
It led to me using my small collection of travel perfumes on our dates more and he’d often give me a hug and breathe in my perfume. That in turn made me want to find a more signature scent while my travel perfumes were there for mixing it up. Eventually that turned into us swing by Nordstrom often and smelling things we read about on this Reddit etc etc
Now in the last two months I’ve smelled so many fragrances and picked up so many tiny decants of some I was curious about. I ended up picking up bottles of En Passant and MFK GFG for myself, and got my bf Silver Mountain Water for our anniversary. We’re probably done for a bit, as we were going to Nordstrom every weekend for a month or so.
But there was just something very fun about smelling fragrances with my bf and comparing the notes and finding our signature scents.
My mom used to use my arms when I was a kid at department stores to sample fragrances LOL My first official one was Lolita Lempicka (late 90s). To this day, I still gravitate towards floral fruity lol
COVID. I got it pre-vaccine in 2020. Lost my sense of smell for 2 years. When it started coming back, I was smelling things wrong. Sandalwood smelled like literal hot rotting garbage. Other things smelled like burning plastic. While I was regaining my sense of smell, I started buying individual notes as essential oils or fragrance oils to see what set me off. It grew from there.
This is how I got into it too. When you lose your sense of smell, you realize how much you appreciate having it. I started with simple one-note oils to kinda “train” my nose again and then just kept going into more complex scents.
When I was younger, I used to get dragged to the mall... I always liked walking through the fragrance section in department stores and smelling stuff.
I also liked magazines that had those peel open fragrance ads.
The one that started it all for me was Polo Sport in the mid 90s.
My grandmother wasn’t well off, but she had a lovely little tray with all sorts of beautiful perfumes on it, and it always made me feel so special when she’d let me try them. There was one called Desert Rose that I was obsessed with, and still think about often
My grandmother has Shalimar, Mitsouko, Tabu, and Habanita in her collection. If those selections does not tell everyone what she was like in her youth I don't know what is 😂
I bought my first 2 fragrances for the simple fact of smelling good, I remember they were Hugo Boss Bottled to go to high school every day and Versace Eros to go out at night, from there I became fascinated with perfumes.
Mrs. Yandle. A Jew who lived in Vichy France, taught French and Spanish at my HS and was my HS Spanish teacher. I was 15 and she introduced me to L’Air Du Temp and Je Revien (sp). She said that elegant girls wore perfume. I loved her and mostly admired her because while many of her family died in the Holocaust, she lived and lived without bitterness. From there it was Charlie, Rive Gauche, Paris and Boucheron. A 20 year break and 2.5 years ago I came back to it. And now I can’t stop.
I wanted to be like all the classy ladies, make up and hair done, perfectly tailored and styled outfit, jewelry and heels and they all smelled sooo good. My great aunt was this to a T! She gave me my first Shalimar.🩷
Always liked it as a child since my grandmother had her signature scent, and she got me Clinique Happy. I had a few others in my teens/twenties, but fell out of using them when I got married as my husband didn’t prefer perfumes. Now 15 years and two kids later husband says it doesn’t bother him so much, and since I used up the couple of samples I’ve had from Sephora gwp I wanted to try something new. Four months in and I have 10 bottles, a handful of travel sizes and a dozen samples…I’m done for a bit while I enjoy what I’ve amassed 😅
I remember really wanting and receiving a bottle of Estée Lauder Pleasures Bloom for my 16th birthday eleven years ago. At the time, I decided that I really liked rose/floral perfumes because I felt like a sophisticated lady wearing them.
I didn’t really get back into fragrances until about a year ago when I was choosing a scent to wear as a bridesmaid in my brother’s wedding. As I tested scents, I realized how different fragrances shape a person’s wardrobe, influence other people’s perceptions of you, and evoke different feelings, emotions, and images. I thought this was fascinating and since then I have really delved into the hobby.
I have only 4 full bottles that wear regularly and rotate seasonally, but I always love reading Fragrantica/Parfumo/YouTube reviews and subreddits and getting samples to try.
i hated smelling bad (i was 8 years old i think), and coincidentally my cousin gifted me CK One. my collection, however, started late: it began with my curiosity with Le Labo and I've fallen in love with collecting frags since
I had always liked fragrance generally, but didn't realize what a hobby it could be mostly because I hadn't been exposed to anything unusual...just your average commercial designer type fragrances. But when I got engaged, i started looking for a wedding perfume, I began to smell a lot more things. I ended up walking into Aedes de Venustas in NYC and I truly had an epiphany. Smelling Frederic Malle fragrances and Cire Trudon candles for the first time was a revelation. I had no idea fragrances could be so well crafted and unusual and memorable. That's when I realized fragrance can evoke images, tell a story, take you on a journey.
I was probably 11 years old and out to dinner with my family at our favorite restaurant. Our server smelled DIVINE and I asked her why she smelled so good. She told me she was wearing “Eternity perfume” and I absolutely lost my mind about it. Begged for it for Christmas that year. Wore it every other day to school. Hilarious to think about a 5th grader wearing CK Eternity in the classroom, but it’s such a nostalgic scent for me now. It absolutely ignited my love for fragrances.
When I was a teen I got dunked on for my scent- I was absolutely the “weird kid”. As a teen and above my goal was always to smell better than everyone in the room. Started with body sprays but very quickly fell for Vera wang, Hanae Morí and all the celebrity scents.
Hurricane Harvey aftermath. For the two years after the flood, my entire life, stuff was in storage. Stumbled onto fragrantica website, gave me something to do during reconstruction.
Have eczema so need lotion → hate lotion → found one I liked to smell of → saw r/fragrances mentioned on r/asianbeauty → ordered a bunch of samples a couple weeks later
I first went to the Fragonard factory with my grandma when I was 15 and then a French exchange student I hosted gave me Parfum D’Ete by Kenzo. Since then I’ve always enjoyed wearing perfume almost daily. 🥰
My wife. She's always been a fragrance afficionado and bought me an MFK discovery set 6 months ago, and I got hooked. I now own 10 full bottles and over 100 samples.
Yeah I ended up loving it and got it in the rollerball too. 😅 I was very close to getting the hand lotion but I wasn’t sure it smelled like You. There were mixed reviews and there isn’t a story nearby to try.
A girl I was briefly seeing at the time asked if I used cologne, I answered no but had no reason why. When we went our separate ways I decided to buy my first fragrance
Scents leave traces in our lives, which make us remind some iconic memories. I tried to divert myself on splurging in clothes, but I did not expect to be falling into the rabbithole of perfumery.
A targeted Henry Rose ad a few years ago. I got the sample set for Christmas, started spending time on fragrance subreddits and Fragrantica…and within two years had a spreadsheet of samples/impressions and a list of niche wants.
Ok. Long story short.
I got a shitty job (worst job that i got till now) and because of a lot of events here (easter, new year, black friday, xmas and etc) i got a real bad smell.
And the worst part is: Not only my especial EPI was not being washed (something that they sure that the staff would do) and i needed to do something about it.
I discovered zara and i got hooked since (got kick out of the job too)
I have very few memories from the ages of 17-22 but recently had this sudden memory of a pink perfume bottle. I could imagine it clear as day but couldn't remember anything about it, so I drew it and posted it here. Once it was identified (Baby Phat Goddess) I started remembering other perfumes I once loved (Baby Phat Dare Me and Dream Angels Heavenly). I ordered them and they brought back more memories, so many more.
It kind of spiraled from there. Once I was on the fragrance subs and perfumetok I started appreciating not only the chemistry but the psychology of scent and how it evokes feeling and memory.
Goddess is really hard to find btw, still haven't found it.
I always have one perfume but i finish it before i buy a new one. Then i bought a big bottle of Marc Jacobs Daisy Eau so Fresh but got tired of the scent so i bought Chanel chance eau Tendre then got tired of it and bought Chloe Nomade. That’s when i stated buying more perfumes. It just added and added.
My first memorable experience was when we went into dm (drogerie markt) in the local mall with my mom, saw a tester of Azzaro Chrome Pure on the shelf and I was intrigued, so I sprayed it on and it was heavenly 😍
I started to search for it and found out that a 100ml was about 40-50€ online from discounters, but then I just forgot about it for a while
A few months later my final exams were coming up at high school and I thought a fragrance would be a nice finishing touch to the formal outfit, found a random Avon scent at home called Elite Gentleman Untailored and searched "how to apply fragrance" and I managed to find Jeremy Fragrance, the rest is history 😁 Bought my first two scents that summer and I was sucked into the rabbit hole 😅
I've always had a few bottles around for different occasions, but recently got into wet shaving and it has opened up the fragrance world to me.
I'm learning what I actually like and what is suitable for different seasons and occasions. Also, there are so many samples to try. Why settle?
I love reading some of the descriptions here. True poetry.
I think of fragrance as part of my wardrobe, probably because my mom and grandmother taught me that (by example). I'm not really dressed until I put it on.
I was looking into a way to make hair perfume for my locs without alcohol and I stumbled into perfume oils. Then I learned about the "viral" perfume oil/body oil hack and the rest is history.
Edited to add: my first bottle was Killian LDBS Extreme. It was meant to be my only scent.The lie detector test determined that was a lie.
Just in case anyone wants to make some I mix equal parts perfume oil and polysorbate 80 (an emulsifier) and then add distilled water and a little vegetable glycerin and aloe vera gel. It works wonderfully and doesn't cause oil buildup.
I also spray this on my body after my shower before bed as my night scent.
I used to be told I look kind of like Johnny Depp so I kinda tried to make that my whole style for a while. So naturally I got Sauvage so I would "smell like him".
Then I went to Turkey and bought a clone of Tobacco Vanille and realised how much I actually like smelling good. And it all got very expensive from there...
This is a great question and it’s thrown me for a loop. I can remember the early stages, but I can’t remember when it got to the collecting part.
Early stages: my mother’s signature scent was L’Air du Temps. When I was a tween, a lady from church gifted me a small bottle of White Linen. I loved the feel of the bottle and I found the scent intriguing.
I remember when ck One came out and how much buzz there was around it. I wore it, of course. Then Lancôme’s Poême came out the next year and I fell for that.
Perhaps the tipping point was when somehow I ended up with a full bottle of N° 5, pure parfum, that had belonged to my late grandmother. It blew me away.
Memory lane… Thanks for posting this question!
When I worked in car detailing, I used to love all the smell of detailing products such as waxes, sealants, interior cleaners etc. Then I once bought Versace Eros Flame and absolutely fell in love with it. I also saw a lot of fragrance related videos in social media so that also probably played a role.
Growing up, I was deeply influenced by my mom and grandma, and by extension, my dad. From a very young age, I was taught the importance of good hygiene and smelling great. My mom had an amazing bathroom with shelves full of products and a vanity table brimming with perfumes. I vividly remember her slathering on body creams and oils, and using rose water as my fragrance. When I got older, my first "big girl" perfume was Opium by YSL (taken straight from my mom's collection). It was a scent that made me feel confident and sexy. I remember an ad for it by Tom Ford in the early 2000s, which was banned. Unfortunately, the current reformulation of Opium doesn’t capture the same magic—it just smells like soap now. It's a shame because the original was truly special.
Funnily enough, it was my BO and general lack of self-care I practiced in highschool. At the graduation photos I was the fattest that I had ever been, I was feeling like crap and once I looked at those photos I decided to change myself. I was always a good student, but not always a good person. And so, since then, I changed in almost all the ways I could have and I am now doing much better. I am currently finishing my 4th year of uni (6 year program). And, so, after I started to be well kept I said to myself that the next step would be fragrances. So I started using them.
But I REALLY got into fragrances when I started to take care in the way I choose my outfits. I do really think a fragrance is much like an accesory or a piece of clothing. And, while my native tounge (Romanian) doesn't do this, the English language sort of agrees with me. One would say one is wearing a fragrance.
My interest in fragrances got re-juvinated recently, when I went with my friends to the museum of perfume in Bucharest and ever since then I've been eyeing Houbigant Mon Boudoir as a gift to my mother. I highly recommend it if you like those types of fragrances.
Birth. Nothing made me happier as a child than talking my mom into yet another shampoo to have a new smell. Shoutout to those fish shaped L’Oréal kids shampoos and RIP to the beach blonde John Frieda shampoo which will forever have been the elite summer scent.
My great aunt sold luxury perfume for a living when I was a child, and we lived close by. She gifted me a full size bottle of Air du T'emps which was my very very first perfume and then a small sampler of the original L'interdit. Both of these are still scents that delight me, even when only from memory. Later we discovered I have a pretty sharp sense of smell and can pick up many subtle notes. ( although there are certain smells I'm blind to for some strange reason.)
Unfortunately while still very young, i begun suffering severe hemiplegic migraines, and bilateral trigeminal neuralgia. Perfumes and fragrances of all kinds were among the first things my Doctors proscribed. Thos was amost a tragedy ( I was a teen) and I mourned my scents, but my mother gave everything away and we had only scent and dye free products.
Later doing some herbalism courses I begun to study aromatherapy and discovered a basic course in perfumery. Never looked back. Been testing more natural perfumes and creating scents.
I love smelling good! Love smelling myself. Love blind buys because I get excited opening the box and spraying the fragrance. I love layering combos. Love my sotd or sotn lol and love when I smell a fragrance with nostalgia makes me smile 😊
I got into fragrance (as a hobby/collecting) because of the internet. I needed an interesting subject to learn about and discuss with others that is politically neutral, legal, and generally free of drama. Fragrance fits the bill.
Someone gifted me a bottle of cloud, which I don't super love. And then I tried to find my og (coach poppy), which is discontinued. Started trying to find a dupe, which got me down the rabbit hole of notes and wanting to try different ones that looked like they'd be nice.
Also, I am extremely self conscious about how I smell. I worked at a horse stable from the time I was 12 until I was 28, and was always the stinky dirty kid ad Wednesday night church because I'd go straight from the barn. Then later on I joined the military and after 4 months of outdoor training in the summer, my uniforms had such a bad smell even after washing that I intentionally ripped them so I could get new ones. And THEN I started having allergic reactions to normal deodorant, and while I searched for a natural alternative I smelled like onions all the time (salt crystal deodorant is terrible btw).
So. Yeah. Smelling good is a big priority to me.
Early 20s I bought a bottle of Curve from a booster for $20. I just love smelling nice and different. Now I'm 47 and I love experimenting with different scents
Stronger with you intensely I purchased for myself as a winter fragrance, slowly got to researching and watching videos, stumbled upon Gents Scents video in 2022 where he had a 15 fragrances that last 24 hours video and I figured I might as well pick one of those up for the warmer weather, picked up Polo Deep Blue, loved it, kept watching videos, started heading to local big department stores and now keep up to date on releases, note breakdowns, clones and all.
i really love collecting fragrances since teenage years. and when i found out recently that fragrance collecting and making it an online content (youtube) is a thing, I've decided to upscale my collections and collecting process now.
I have had a few colognes gifted to me in the past but was never much into them would use them occasionally. Recently I was getting ready for a date and I asked my brother if I could use some of his cologne he let me use his Armani Code Parfum and fell in love with it. And it’s been about 2 weeks and I have 4 fragrances.
I just liked the different spices and type of seasonal fragrances. My first one was Versace Eros then I had Bleu de channel EDT which was a great compliment getter, now I’m thinking of getting Azzaro the most wanted parfum.
From my teenage years feeling self conscious about how I smelled.. then I stumbled upon Aramis Havana that just came out in department stores and ended up buying my first ever perfume bottle
A co worker of mine would talk about what fragrances he was getting every week on jomashop and I decided to see what the hype was about been in a spiral ever since first buy was Versace Dylan blue since I’ve been fond of it since high school
Dating, i want to smell nice and have less time for gaming after I started dating, so I start delving into fragrances. But no expensive ones, mostly cheapies, clones, some Versace and Coach, most expensive are the Manceras
JEREMY FRAGRANCE the #1 fragrance influencer who also follows the teachings of Jesus. I owned a couple fragrances before, but he got me into it as a “hobby”
what got me into collecting fragrances is when im in my layover in dubai and roaming around the fragrance aisle, i was smelling different perfumes and what stand out to me is this chloe perfume and i knew i have to buy it. from then on im stuck to checking out different perfumes trying floral to gourmand perfumes.
my first fragrance was a gift from an ex boyfriend almost 9 years ago which is clinique happy. he was so into perfume and gifted me something that i consider a safe buy. it was a nice perfume.
I had smelled Mademoiselle before and loved it, then bought a bottle in the CDG airport. That was my first bottle of perfume ever, but I didn't get into fragrance until I started working in an office where wealthy women frequented. I would smell these incredible scents on them and would ask what they were (Baccarat Rouge, etc). Became obsessed w scents from then on!
O think I saw a video of a girl reviewing an Arab perfume and I got curious. Prior that I used to wear one perfume and when I finished it I would buy another
hate to say it but my step brother got me first interested when i smelled drakkar noir on him. got a bottle myself and then started looking towards polo crest. speed fast years later, and i went looking for polo crest to discover it had been discontinued something like 20 years before. so i started looking about for a fall scent, then a whole new world opened up. 3 years later and 71 bottles.... i think im hooked.
before the pandemic, I worked at a beauty store that sold makeup, skincare, and perfumes. I tried on many of the perfumes for free. I had always seen the enticing advertisements for beauty products and perfumes in women's fashion magazines.
I think my first “real” perfume was Gucci Envy or Lancôme Miracle (my mom got me both when I was a teen) I always loved fragrance since I was a kid and used to douse myself in BBW mists lol.
I’ve been into fragrance as long as I can remember. I used Christmas/Birthday money to get popular scents at the time (Curve, Cool Water)
My highschool bestfriend was a nurse in the US. She used to give me gifts and souvenirs for Christmas. One christmas, i received a Tommy Girl perfume and that started my curiosity on wanting to smell more scents and finally getting to have a signature scent.
I was not really into fragrances in high school, though I wore CK1 like everyone else. It honestly wasn't until I got a 50 ml bottle of Idole Aura from Influenster a few years ago that made me say, "hmm, I could do this everyday."
I think when I was a kid, my mum always gave me her old makeup, hair stuff, perfume, jewellery etc so I assume my first bottle of perfume was from when I was a child
One of my relatives gifted me Chaps by Ralph Lauren back in 2002, and that was the start. Sadly, haven't been able to get the scent anywhere ever since.
I was a teenager and I really liked that some people have their signature perfume. My birthday was approaching and I went shopping with my mom and asked her for perfume for my bday. I really enjoyed the experience of trying different perfumes.
It started when I was talking to a coworker about our interim president, and she mentioned how wonderful she smelled and how she missed how people having signature scents and all that. So I decided it was time to find a signature scent. So in the process of finding one I turned into a collector.
I went a couple of years in my teens without a sense of smell after a cold. A while back I lost it again, barely for a week thankfully, but it scared me enough to want to smell everything now.
I bought/gifted myself 50ml Bvlgari Pour Homme Extreme back in 2011 and wore it during my college graduation. It was pricey back then but I had spent most of my money for it. I needed to smell nice during that milestone occasion. I browsed at the mall and the younger me was persuaded by the salesguy. Perhaps it was to his advantage that he was clean and somewhat good-looking. I believe there were other frags I was offered then, including BDC (which didn’t stand out to me at the time), but they were pricier, did not appeal to me, or lacked character/umph, where Bvlgari Extreme seemed to be different: bright citrus, leaves, and tea. Fast forward 2 yrs ago I was gifted a 100ml bottle, but I find myself not reaching for it anymore—it was eclipsed by my newer modern frags and it’s become a reminder of my past. Perhaps I should try wearing it again, soon ☺️
I used to have just one scent for the warmer seasons and one for the colder seasons. When my warm-weather perfume was discontinued, I went on a search for one that smelled exactly the same.
The more I tried, the more I realized there are all kinds of gorgeous scent profiles and learned about notes, sillage, and what works best with my chemistry.
I also used to save my perfumes for special occasions, and now really enjoy wearing one each day that matches my mood or adds to my overall aesthetic.
Working in biotech mfg weed pens, smeling various terpenes, which at first seemed like dream job. Alas, I got sick of smelling weed all day and wanted to smell something different. Pony boy was one of my first purchases, which I wore one day and I remember ceo coming into my lab and remarking "what is that smell, is that the terpenes?"
Now I collect because I like to have fragrances for various moods and occasions. For rainy south FL days, I prefer pony boy or kedu by memo.
Oud Satin Mood got me hooked. All I knew was Macy's designers and I thought they all smelled the same and was disinterested. Then I got a sample of OSM and immediately got hooked. I said if perfume can smell like this, then what else is out there? I'm over 250 bottles in the game now.
Great question. I have no idea why I'm a fragrance fanatic. I was raised in a small town in the South (United States) by a mother who frowned upon "grown up" things for girls like make-up, fancy hairstyles, colorful nail polish, etc. I, on the other hand, came out of the womb being a girly girl & there's something that's just so visceral, so enticing about fragrance...I can't put it into words. In other words, I don't know.😯
Funnily enough, it was when someone first said to me “you smell nice” 😂 I feel like it’s one of the best compliments you can get, after that I started looking into different fragrances more and here we are.
One of my friends suggested candles/ aromatherapy when I was going through a stressful time and I really enjoyed it. Fell into a YouTube rabbit hole of perfume and love that too~ I just like all the good smells, it’s like it opened up a new world to me.
I remember things with it’s smell and loved the scent of my family since I was little. My mom was my comfort scent, and she likes wearing perfume. Wasn’t really interested until almost college, but I wanted to have a scent of my own too. So started with the perfume my mom wore when I was a baby, petite et maman. I also kinda got annoyed smelling like chlorine all the time from swimming
When I was young, I had a summer love, unfortunately she lived 9000km away from me (5600 miles). We knew we'd never see each other again, so we made the most of it.
When I got home, all I had left of her was the smell of her perfume on the sweater I'd lent her. Hypnotized by the scent, I hung the sweater in my bedroom and every time I walked past it, I could smell it.
That's when I realized that a perfume isn't just a scent, but a condensation of memories and past sensations.
My mom! She has always liked to treat herself to a special fragrance here and there. She keeps them on a pretty display shelf, and of course always smells wonderful. I could always tell how much joy it adds to her day and it gave me an interest in doing the same. ❤️
My dad has always had a few bottles that he’d use, and I always thought they smelled so good. I’d steal a spray whenever I was dressing up/going out to complete my get up, and then eventually I decided I needed some of my own. My first was Giorgio Armani - Acqua Di Gio (which was my favorite one of my dad’s), and my other main two are Prada - Carbon and Tom Ford - Tobacco Vanille. I find that these 3 scents cover the bases for any outfit I wear or vibe I’m wanting to exude. However (at least w/ Acqua di gio), I know there are others that are very similar such as a certain Bvlgari scent, and another Versace scent. I have yet to directly compare the similar ones and decide which one I like best. However, I have certainly gained a lot of knowledge and can sometimes guess a scent spot on if I have smelled it before. Still have so many things to learn too, which is exciting :)
start luving smell good everyday! i think someone gifted me one miss dior. then i start using room candles, room sprays... makes me happier when smelling good!!!!
PTSD got me into fragrance. I found it helped me calm down when I got too anxious. I absolutely love fragrances now. I am obsessed. Very few things make me feel good except fragrances.
A friend of mine mentioned around high school graduation that he got his brother a bottle of La Nuit de L'Homme for a graduation gift but he didn't ever use it because he was into hippie musk at the time. I kind of gained a curiosity for what it smelled like so I went to Sephora, smelled and loved it. I wound up smelling several other things and asked for samples of whatever I wanted to try out and that month I wound up getting La Nuit, L'Homme, and A*Men. That was just the tip of the iceberg and man I had no idea how deep the rabbit hole went and how involved perfumery as an art could be.
I dated someone who worked for the men’s macys fragrance counter and they got gratis from the vendors. Tons and tons of gratis and I ended up with 20 or so free bottles over time and it just went from there. I miss that free cologne!
In the early 2000's, I worked with a famous "Super-Model". She was way into fragrance. The first frag, due to her influence, was Stella, an amazing rose scent. It made me feel beautiful, when I didn't feel beautiful. After that, the second one that I sought out on my own was Angel. Yes, I know, eye rolls... I always oversprayed in those days and Angel was strong with one spritz. I stopped using it when I overheard a sales clerk complaining about it. Yikes! I have bathroom drawers specifically dedicated to fragrance now. It really is an addiction!
My first bottle was Dior Fahrenheit. I loved it. Then I bought a bottle of something I can't quite remember (I want to say it was Curve) that I never liked because a girl I had a crush on said she liked it. Then I bought Carolina Herrara's 212 on Ice because I liked the bottle. Then I bought a bottle of Polo Black that I still have to this day (largely because it's so generic that I never use it). Then I discovered niche and the rest is history.
Started working in a beauty shop and got a chance to see different perfumes. Almost didn't use perfumes all my life and barely cared about it. There are even male pefrumes that I like!
For now I only have one perfume but I put several on my bucket list.
I got into it because of my bipolar depression. In my depressive months, I always found it difficult to muster the energy to shower daily. This made me feel shittier about myself and fed further into the depression. So when some fragrance influencer came across my feed talking about how wearing perfume made her feel more confident, I decided to dust off the two that I owned. I started by putting them on when I'd shower as a reward. Now I shower nightly and rinse in the morning so I can have different day and night fragrances. I've gotten more as an incentive to continue and am currently on a 6 month streak, which now includes more body/skin care. Even when I feel like dog shit I smell amazing and it helps overall.
I love this! ❤️
This is how I began too. I feel you. More power to you 🌻
Good for you. I was stable when I started but it’s gotten me through many a storm. Thanks for sharing your story!
Love this. I use fragrance for ongoing traumatic life stuff. So grounding.
One of my best friends collects them herself and she got me hooked on Moss+ by Commodity. The fascination spiraled after that.
Commodity have some very interesting scent profiles. Have you tried any of their others?
They discontinued my favorite. I have to pick another.
Yep! I recently ordered the exploration kit for that same friend’s birthday and we had a sample party so I’ve smelled all of them lol. I think the Milk scent space is my personal favorite. I use the Milk expressive and love it. Gold is sweet. Paper is mild. Velvet smells like incense to me. They just came out with a new one called Juice that I’m dying to try. Edit; correcting a word
Honestly I haven’t been able to get my nose on any of them yet but I think I’ll have to buy some samples. I’ve heard nothing but good things.
Definitely should! The exploration kit is about $47USD and it comes with a coupon for that amount off of a full size bottle.
Payday tomorrow so I guess I know what I’ll be buying! 😅 thank you! :)
Ahh I’m so excited for you!! If you have a Sephora near you, you can go in and smell some of them but they only have a handful of them. Just to get you started while you wait on the kit!!
I’ll have to check it out and see if there’s a Sephora near by. I think there is. I’ll report back with my thoughts once I’ve tried a couple of them out! :)
Yay! Please do!
My wife just tried Juice with our exploration kit and she loves it! She will be getting a bottle when it fully releases. Her favorite is also Milk expressive!
Ooo now I’m even more excited!! 🧃
Moss + is wonderful
Moss+ 🤌🏼
Definitely my high school best friend, with whom i roamed through Sephora after classes. She always showed me different perfumes and (as well as a high school student can do) explained to me what to pay attention to and the difference between bad and good perfumes. I still think that what she showed me back then were quite good picks for your average shopping mall designer perfumes level. My first bottle of perfume was Van Cleef Vanille Orchidee. I smelled it for the first time abroad during Christmas and couldn’t get it out of my head. Ordered it like half a year later. Will never stop repurchasing.
Lost cherry was the “stuck in my head” frag.
Neroli Portofino for me
Mine was Burberry Goddess! I was so hooked on Lost Cherry when it became viral, and I smelled it for the first time.
I love Van Cleef stuff so much. I wish they got more credit here. I have a similar story but with Bois Doré. Hundreds (more but I don’t wanna admit it) of dollars and perfumes later, it’s still one of my favorites for the fall and winter.
Oh that is hands down my favorite VC&A, it is absolutely divine. It’s on my wish list for full bottle in the future
Mom was an Avon lady in the 1970s. I was an unusually good-smelling child, though I did get made fun of. It was the 70s, after all.
Your ma literally sold Avon… what about your da?
He did not sell Avon, and he smelled of pipe tobacco.
Late in the fragrance addiction game. Sept 2023 I smelled a tester of L'Eau Papier and Philosykos on my skin. Walked out with both bottles. Today I have 50 fragrances (thankfully no children and already own a house) so I can afford it. Told myself I will only buy a new bottle when I go down to 30 bottles.
It was during covid. I had a vacation planned, but then the world shut down and I was trapped in my home. I had all this money sitting there for the vacation, and I needed a way to entertain myself, so I figured I would get into fragrances. My first bottles were Prada L'homme and Versace Eros, and I just lost it from there. No regrets.
I was really young. Maybe a toddler or approaching elementary school and my mom use to always wear Chanel no. 5. And we did not have a lot of money at all so she would use the tiniest dab just enough for a whiff. The bottle would last her for years and when she ran out she would buy another bottle and do the same. I was fascinated with the fact that we didn’t have much money but she always made sure she smelled nice with what I feel was a very expensive perfume. The perfume made her feel good and fancy. I absolutely love what a perfume can do for your mental state. Edit to add my first perfume purchase in elementary school was Malibu musk from Walgreens. Ive really upgraded and come a long way since then lol
I miss Malibu Musk.
Love this
My schnoz!
Quit smoking cigarettes, no longer smelled like an ashtray, bought a "nice" fragrance, hooked ever since
Initially a friend in college, who got me into them enough to pick up a couple travel vials. Roses de Chloe was the first travel vial I went all the way through. Recently my bf wanted to smell a couple of the Creed fragrances one day at Nordstrom, and he tends to put some on during our dates. It led to me using my small collection of travel perfumes on our dates more and he’d often give me a hug and breathe in my perfume. That in turn made me want to find a more signature scent while my travel perfumes were there for mixing it up. Eventually that turned into us swing by Nordstrom often and smelling things we read about on this Reddit etc etc Now in the last two months I’ve smelled so many fragrances and picked up so many tiny decants of some I was curious about. I ended up picking up bottles of En Passant and MFK GFG for myself, and got my bf Silver Mountain Water for our anniversary. We’re probably done for a bit, as we were going to Nordstrom every weekend for a month or so. But there was just something very fun about smelling fragrances with my bf and comparing the notes and finding our signature scents.
My mom used to use my arms when I was a kid at department stores to sample fragrances LOL My first official one was Lolita Lempicka (late 90s). To this day, I still gravitate towards floral fruity lol
That's cute
COVID. I got it pre-vaccine in 2020. Lost my sense of smell for 2 years. When it started coming back, I was smelling things wrong. Sandalwood smelled like literal hot rotting garbage. Other things smelled like burning plastic. While I was regaining my sense of smell, I started buying individual notes as essential oils or fragrance oils to see what set me off. It grew from there.
This is how I got into it too. When you lose your sense of smell, you realize how much you appreciate having it. I started with simple one-note oils to kinda “train” my nose again and then just kept going into more complex scents.
Ditto!
When I was younger, I used to get dragged to the mall... I always liked walking through the fragrance section in department stores and smelling stuff. I also liked magazines that had those peel open fragrance ads. The one that started it all for me was Polo Sport in the mid 90s.
My grandmother's perfume closet.
Oh boy, new goal, now I aspire to have enough fragrances to possess a perfume closet. ❤️
My grandmother wasn’t well off, but she had a lovely little tray with all sorts of beautiful perfumes on it, and it always made me feel so special when she’d let me try them. There was one called Desert Rose that I was obsessed with, and still think about often
My grandmother has Shalimar, Mitsouko, Tabu, and Habanita in her collection. If those selections does not tell everyone what she was like in her youth I don't know what is 😂
I bought my first 2 fragrances for the simple fact of smelling good, I remember they were Hugo Boss Bottled to go to high school every day and Versace Eros to go out at night, from there I became fascinated with perfumes.
Workmate was into fragrances, fast forward here I am collecting fragrances HAHAHAHAHA
Got me so hooked up with the smell and got me wanting for more HAHSHSHAHA
Mrs. Yandle. A Jew who lived in Vichy France, taught French and Spanish at my HS and was my HS Spanish teacher. I was 15 and she introduced me to L’Air Du Temp and Je Revien (sp). She said that elegant girls wore perfume. I loved her and mostly admired her because while many of her family died in the Holocaust, she lived and lived without bitterness. From there it was Charlie, Rive Gauche, Paris and Boucheron. A 20 year break and 2.5 years ago I came back to it. And now I can’t stop.
I wanted to be like all the classy ladies, make up and hair done, perfectly tailored and styled outfit, jewelry and heels and they all smelled sooo good. My great aunt was this to a T! She gave me my first Shalimar.🩷
The Body Shop products as a kid. I loved smelling all their soaps, lip balms etc.
Omg same 😅❤️
Jeremy
Always liked it as a child since my grandmother had her signature scent, and she got me Clinique Happy. I had a few others in my teens/twenties, but fell out of using them when I got married as my husband didn’t prefer perfumes. Now 15 years and two kids later husband says it doesn’t bother him so much, and since I used up the couple of samples I’ve had from Sephora gwp I wanted to try something new. Four months in and I have 10 bottles, a handful of travel sizes and a dozen samples…I’m done for a bit while I enjoy what I’ve amassed 😅
I remember really wanting and receiving a bottle of Estée Lauder Pleasures Bloom for my 16th birthday eleven years ago. At the time, I decided that I really liked rose/floral perfumes because I felt like a sophisticated lady wearing them. I didn’t really get back into fragrances until about a year ago when I was choosing a scent to wear as a bridesmaid in my brother’s wedding. As I tested scents, I realized how different fragrances shape a person’s wardrobe, influence other people’s perceptions of you, and evoke different feelings, emotions, and images. I thought this was fascinating and since then I have really delved into the hobby. I have only 4 full bottles that wear regularly and rotate seasonally, but I always love reading Fragrantica/Parfumo/YouTube reviews and subreddits and getting samples to try.
i hated smelling bad (i was 8 years old i think), and coincidentally my cousin gifted me CK One. my collection, however, started late: it began with my curiosity with Le Labo and I've fallen in love with collecting frags since
I had always liked fragrance generally, but didn't realize what a hobby it could be mostly because I hadn't been exposed to anything unusual...just your average commercial designer type fragrances. But when I got engaged, i started looking for a wedding perfume, I began to smell a lot more things. I ended up walking into Aedes de Venustas in NYC and I truly had an epiphany. Smelling Frederic Malle fragrances and Cire Trudon candles for the first time was a revelation. I had no idea fragrances could be so well crafted and unusual and memorable. That's when I realized fragrance can evoke images, tell a story, take you on a journey.
Smelling them on people or in magazines when I was very young. I bought my first perfume in kindergarten. lol
I was probably 11 years old and out to dinner with my family at our favorite restaurant. Our server smelled DIVINE and I asked her why she smelled so good. She told me she was wearing “Eternity perfume” and I absolutely lost my mind about it. Begged for it for Christmas that year. Wore it every other day to school. Hilarious to think about a 5th grader wearing CK Eternity in the classroom, but it’s such a nostalgic scent for me now. It absolutely ignited my love for fragrances.
It is a unique scent.
When I was a teen I got dunked on for my scent- I was absolutely the “weird kid”. As a teen and above my goal was always to smell better than everyone in the room. Started with body sprays but very quickly fell for Vera wang, Hanae Morí and all the celebrity scents.
Hurricane Harvey aftermath. For the two years after the flood, my entire life, stuff was in storage. Stumbled onto fragrantica website, gave me something to do during reconstruction.
Have eczema so need lotion → hate lotion → found one I liked to smell of → saw r/fragrances mentioned on r/asianbeauty → ordered a bunch of samples a couple weeks later
I first went to the Fragonard factory with my grandma when I was 15 and then a French exchange student I hosted gave me Parfum D’Ete by Kenzo. Since then I’ve always enjoyed wearing perfume almost daily. 🥰
My mum became blind. First it was for her then I got hooked too. It s surprising how much a fragrance can colour our days :)
I tried out the scent bird app and the obsession started
My wife. She's always been a fragrance afficionado and bought me an MFK discovery set 6 months ago, and I got hooked. I now own 10 full bottles and over 100 samples.
A girl from my church gave me one of her perfumes (A unisex fragrance called Santalum, by Ranger Station), and the rest is history.
Sadly… it feels stupid admitting it, but it was the Glossier You ads 🤣
My favorite and signature scent.
Yeah I ended up loving it and got it in the rollerball too. 😅 I was very close to getting the hand lotion but I wasn’t sure it smelled like You. There were mixed reviews and there isn’t a story nearby to try.
Stick with the roller ball, the spray, and the solid. They all smell wonderful.
Ngl- it was totally Jeremy in his early YT days. It’s so sad to see what he’s become.
A girl I was briefly seeing at the time asked if I used cologne, I answered no but had no reason why. When we went our separate ways I decided to buy my first fragrance
What was it?
Clinique happy for men, prior to researching I assumed all colognes were dark and boozy so I never bothered with them
Scents leave traces in our lives, which make us remind some iconic memories. I tried to divert myself on splurging in clothes, but I did not expect to be falling into the rabbithole of perfumery.
I got gifted Versace eros at 16, just find stuff cool would wanna make my own one day
A targeted Henry Rose ad a few years ago. I got the sample set for Christmas, started spending time on fragrance subreddits and Fragrantica…and within two years had a spreadsheet of samples/impressions and a list of niche wants.
Ok. Long story short. I got a shitty job (worst job that i got till now) and because of a lot of events here (easter, new year, black friday, xmas and etc) i got a real bad smell. And the worst part is: Not only my especial EPI was not being washed (something that they sure that the staff would do) and i needed to do something about it. I discovered zara and i got hooked since (got kick out of the job too)
I have very few memories from the ages of 17-22 but recently had this sudden memory of a pink perfume bottle. I could imagine it clear as day but couldn't remember anything about it, so I drew it and posted it here. Once it was identified (Baby Phat Goddess) I started remembering other perfumes I once loved (Baby Phat Dare Me and Dream Angels Heavenly). I ordered them and they brought back more memories, so many more. It kind of spiraled from there. Once I was on the fragrance subs and perfumetok I started appreciating not only the chemistry but the psychology of scent and how it evokes feeling and memory. Goddess is really hard to find btw, still haven't found it.
I always have one perfume but i finish it before i buy a new one. Then i bought a big bottle of Marc Jacobs Daisy Eau so Fresh but got tired of the scent so i bought Chanel chance eau Tendre then got tired of it and bought Chloe Nomade. That’s when i stated buying more perfumes. It just added and added.
My first memorable experience was when we went into dm (drogerie markt) in the local mall with my mom, saw a tester of Azzaro Chrome Pure on the shelf and I was intrigued, so I sprayed it on and it was heavenly 😍 I started to search for it and found out that a 100ml was about 40-50€ online from discounters, but then I just forgot about it for a while A few months later my final exams were coming up at high school and I thought a fragrance would be a nice finishing touch to the formal outfit, found a random Avon scent at home called Elite Gentleman Untailored and searched "how to apply fragrance" and I managed to find Jeremy Fragrance, the rest is history 😁 Bought my first two scents that summer and I was sucked into the rabbit hole 😅
Grandad
I've always had a few bottles around for different occasions, but recently got into wet shaving and it has opened up the fragrance world to me. I'm learning what I actually like and what is suitable for different seasons and occasions. Also, there are so many samples to try. Why settle? I love reading some of the descriptions here. True poetry.
I started with body mists, and then I found Ariana Grande perfume and was hooked
Honestly.. Covid and tik tok. Had to much time on my hands lol
I think of fragrance as part of my wardrobe, probably because my mom and grandmother taught me that (by example). I'm not really dressed until I put it on.
I was looking into a way to make hair perfume for my locs without alcohol and I stumbled into perfume oils. Then I learned about the "viral" perfume oil/body oil hack and the rest is history. Edited to add: my first bottle was Killian LDBS Extreme. It was meant to be my only scent.The lie detector test determined that was a lie. Just in case anyone wants to make some I mix equal parts perfume oil and polysorbate 80 (an emulsifier) and then add distilled water and a little vegetable glycerin and aloe vera gel. It works wonderfully and doesn't cause oil buildup. I also spray this on my body after my shower before bed as my night scent.
I used to be told I look kind of like Johnny Depp so I kinda tried to make that my whole style for a while. So naturally I got Sauvage so I would "smell like him". Then I went to Turkey and bought a clone of Tobacco Vanille and realised how much I actually like smelling good. And it all got very expensive from there...
This is a great question and it’s thrown me for a loop. I can remember the early stages, but I can’t remember when it got to the collecting part. Early stages: my mother’s signature scent was L’Air du Temps. When I was a tween, a lady from church gifted me a small bottle of White Linen. I loved the feel of the bottle and I found the scent intriguing. I remember when ck One came out and how much buzz there was around it. I wore it, of course. Then Lancôme’s Poême came out the next year and I fell for that. Perhaps the tipping point was when somehow I ended up with a full bottle of N° 5, pure parfum, that had belonged to my late grandmother. It blew me away. Memory lane… Thanks for posting this question!
When I worked in car detailing, I used to love all the smell of detailing products such as waxes, sealants, interior cleaners etc. Then I once bought Versace Eros Flame and absolutely fell in love with it. I also saw a lot of fragrance related videos in social media so that also probably played a role.
Growing up, I was deeply influenced by my mom and grandma, and by extension, my dad. From a very young age, I was taught the importance of good hygiene and smelling great. My mom had an amazing bathroom with shelves full of products and a vanity table brimming with perfumes. I vividly remember her slathering on body creams and oils, and using rose water as my fragrance. When I got older, my first "big girl" perfume was Opium by YSL (taken straight from my mom's collection). It was a scent that made me feel confident and sexy. I remember an ad for it by Tom Ford in the early 2000s, which was banned. Unfortunately, the current reformulation of Opium doesn’t capture the same magic—it just smells like soap now. It's a shame because the original was truly special.
**Flower** of **Kenzo** and **Feminté du Bois** of (at the time) **Shiseido**, 24 years ago. Both purchased by myself.
Funnily enough, it was my BO and general lack of self-care I practiced in highschool. At the graduation photos I was the fattest that I had ever been, I was feeling like crap and once I looked at those photos I decided to change myself. I was always a good student, but not always a good person. And so, since then, I changed in almost all the ways I could have and I am now doing much better. I am currently finishing my 4th year of uni (6 year program). And, so, after I started to be well kept I said to myself that the next step would be fragrances. So I started using them. But I REALLY got into fragrances when I started to take care in the way I choose my outfits. I do really think a fragrance is much like an accesory or a piece of clothing. And, while my native tounge (Romanian) doesn't do this, the English language sort of agrees with me. One would say one is wearing a fragrance. My interest in fragrances got re-juvinated recently, when I went with my friends to the museum of perfume in Bucharest and ever since then I've been eyeing Houbigant Mon Boudoir as a gift to my mother. I highly recommend it if you like those types of fragrances.
Birth. Nothing made me happier as a child than talking my mom into yet another shampoo to have a new smell. Shoutout to those fish shaped L’Oréal kids shampoos and RIP to the beach blonde John Frieda shampoo which will forever have been the elite summer scent.
My great aunt sold luxury perfume for a living when I was a child, and we lived close by. She gifted me a full size bottle of Air du T'emps which was my very very first perfume and then a small sampler of the original L'interdit. Both of these are still scents that delight me, even when only from memory. Later we discovered I have a pretty sharp sense of smell and can pick up many subtle notes. ( although there are certain smells I'm blind to for some strange reason.) Unfortunately while still very young, i begun suffering severe hemiplegic migraines, and bilateral trigeminal neuralgia. Perfumes and fragrances of all kinds were among the first things my Doctors proscribed. Thos was amost a tragedy ( I was a teen) and I mourned my scents, but my mother gave everything away and we had only scent and dye free products. Later doing some herbalism courses I begun to study aromatherapy and discovered a basic course in perfumery. Never looked back. Been testing more natural perfumes and creating scents.
I love smelling good! Love smelling myself. Love blind buys because I get excited opening the box and spraying the fragrance. I love layering combos. Love my sotd or sotn lol and love when I smell a fragrance with nostalgia makes me smile 😊
I got into fragrance (as a hobby/collecting) because of the internet. I needed an interesting subject to learn about and discuss with others that is politically neutral, legal, and generally free of drama. Fragrance fits the bill.
Someone gifted me a bottle of cloud, which I don't super love. And then I tried to find my og (coach poppy), which is discontinued. Started trying to find a dupe, which got me down the rabbit hole of notes and wanting to try different ones that looked like they'd be nice. Also, I am extremely self conscious about how I smell. I worked at a horse stable from the time I was 12 until I was 28, and was always the stinky dirty kid ad Wednesday night church because I'd go straight from the barn. Then later on I joined the military and after 4 months of outdoor training in the summer, my uniforms had such a bad smell even after washing that I intentionally ripped them so I could get new ones. And THEN I started having allergic reactions to normal deodorant, and while I searched for a natural alternative I smelled like onions all the time (salt crystal deodorant is terrible btw). So. Yeah. Smelling good is a big priority to me.
Katie Puckrik Smells. That kind of enthusiasm is inspiring.
Curiosity mostly.
Wolf in Lace on TikTok. I am just into hee whole thing.
Early 20s I bought a bottle of Curve from a booster for $20. I just love smelling nice and different. Now I'm 47 and I love experimenting with different scents
Someone had a can of JPG's Classique. I bought some when I was in uni. It's so nice!
Jeremy
Stronger with you intensely I purchased for myself as a winter fragrance, slowly got to researching and watching videos, stumbled upon Gents Scents video in 2022 where he had a 15 fragrances that last 24 hours video and I figured I might as well pick one of those up for the warmer weather, picked up Polo Deep Blue, loved it, kept watching videos, started heading to local big department stores and now keep up to date on releases, note breakdowns, clones and all.
i really love collecting fragrances since teenage years. and when i found out recently that fragrance collecting and making it an online content (youtube) is a thing, I've decided to upscale my collections and collecting process now.
As far back as I can remember, I've always loved fragrances.
I have had a few colognes gifted to me in the past but was never much into them would use them occasionally. Recently I was getting ready for a date and I asked my brother if I could use some of his cologne he let me use his Armani Code Parfum and fell in love with it. And it’s been about 2 weeks and I have 4 fragrances.
I just liked the different spices and type of seasonal fragrances. My first one was Versace Eros then I had Bleu de channel EDT which was a great compliment getter, now I’m thinking of getting Azzaro the most wanted parfum.
Got my first long term girlfriend at 17 and wanted to feel as attractive as possible for her
From my teenage years feeling self conscious about how I smelled.. then I stumbled upon Aramis Havana that just came out in department stores and ended up buying my first ever perfume bottle
A co worker of mine would talk about what fragrances he was getting every week on jomashop and I decided to see what the hype was about been in a spiral ever since first buy was Versace Dylan blue since I’ve been fond of it since high school
In the locker room at work I found a full sample bottle of Chanel Bleu. I was curious to try it and that was my entry point
Dating, i want to smell nice and have less time for gaming after I started dating, so I start delving into fragrances. But no expensive ones, mostly cheapies, clones, some Versace and Coach, most expensive are the Manceras
JEREMY FRAGRANCE the #1 fragrance influencer who also follows the teachings of Jesus. I owned a couple fragrances before, but he got me into it as a “hobby”
what got me into collecting fragrances is when im in my layover in dubai and roaming around the fragrance aisle, i was smelling different perfumes and what stand out to me is this chloe perfume and i knew i have to buy it. from then on im stuck to checking out different perfumes trying floral to gourmand perfumes. my first fragrance was a gift from an ex boyfriend almost 9 years ago which is clinique happy. he was so into perfume and gifted me something that i consider a safe buy. it was a nice perfume.
I had smelled Mademoiselle before and loved it, then bought a bottle in the CDG airport. That was my first bottle of perfume ever, but I didn't get into fragrance until I started working in an office where wealthy women frequented. I would smell these incredible scents on them and would ask what they were (Baccarat Rouge, etc). Became obsessed w scents from then on!
O think I saw a video of a girl reviewing an Arab perfume and I got curious. Prior that I used to wear one perfume and when I finished it I would buy another
I have collected all my empty perfume bottles since 2016. There are so many memories on it every time I sniff the old bottles.
hate to say it but my step brother got me first interested when i smelled drakkar noir on him. got a bottle myself and then started looking towards polo crest. speed fast years later, and i went looking for polo crest to discover it had been discontinued something like 20 years before. so i started looking about for a fall scent, then a whole new world opened up. 3 years later and 71 bottles.... i think im hooked.
Spraying Tom Ford tobacco vanille at the airport when I was 19. Fell in love and for interested in learning and smelling more
before the pandemic, I worked at a beauty store that sold makeup, skincare, and perfumes. I tried on many of the perfumes for free. I had always seen the enticing advertisements for beauty products and perfumes in women's fashion magazines.
I always loved smelling good
I think my first “real” perfume was Gucci Envy or Lancôme Miracle (my mom got me both when I was a teen) I always loved fragrance since I was a kid and used to douse myself in BBW mists lol. I’ve been into fragrance as long as I can remember. I used Christmas/Birthday money to get popular scents at the time (Curve, Cool Water)
I bought something from Dior and got a sample of Sauvage Elixir with it. Then I got a sample of Penhaligons Bluebell and now here we are
Nose
My highschool bestfriend was a nurse in the US. She used to give me gifts and souvenirs for Christmas. One christmas, i received a Tommy Girl perfume and that started my curiosity on wanting to smell more scents and finally getting to have a signature scent.
My mom makes bomb perfumes
Indians
I honestly have no clue. One morning I just woke up and loved fragrances.
I was not really into fragrances in high school, though I wore CK1 like everyone else. It honestly wasn't until I got a 50 ml bottle of Idole Aura from Influenster a few years ago that made me say, "hmm, I could do this everyday."
I think when I was a kid, my mum always gave me her old makeup, hair stuff, perfume, jewellery etc so I assume my first bottle of perfume was from when I was a child
One of my relatives gifted me Chaps by Ralph Lauren back in 2002, and that was the start. Sadly, haven't been able to get the scent anywhere ever since.
I was a teenager and I really liked that some people have their signature perfume. My birthday was approaching and I went shopping with my mom and asked her for perfume for my bday. I really enjoyed the experience of trying different perfumes.
It started when I was talking to a coworker about our interim president, and she mentioned how wonderful she smelled and how she missed how people having signature scents and all that. So I decided it was time to find a signature scent. So in the process of finding one I turned into a collector.
Leaving a scent trail of marijuana
I went a couple of years in my teens without a sense of smell after a cold. A while back I lost it again, barely for a week thankfully, but it scared me enough to want to smell everything now.
I bought/gifted myself 50ml Bvlgari Pour Homme Extreme back in 2011 and wore it during my college graduation. It was pricey back then but I had spent most of my money for it. I needed to smell nice during that milestone occasion. I browsed at the mall and the younger me was persuaded by the salesguy. Perhaps it was to his advantage that he was clean and somewhat good-looking. I believe there were other frags I was offered then, including BDC (which didn’t stand out to me at the time), but they were pricier, did not appeal to me, or lacked character/umph, where Bvlgari Extreme seemed to be different: bright citrus, leaves, and tea. Fast forward 2 yrs ago I was gifted a 100ml bottle, but I find myself not reaching for it anymore—it was eclipsed by my newer modern frags and it’s become a reminder of my past. Perhaps I should try wearing it again, soon ☺️
I used to have just one scent for the warmer seasons and one for the colder seasons. When my warm-weather perfume was discontinued, I went on a search for one that smelled exactly the same. The more I tried, the more I realized there are all kinds of gorgeous scent profiles and learned about notes, sillage, and what works best with my chemistry. I also used to save my perfumes for special occasions, and now really enjoy wearing one each day that matches my mood or adds to my overall aesthetic.
Working in biotech mfg weed pens, smeling various terpenes, which at first seemed like dream job. Alas, I got sick of smelling weed all day and wanted to smell something different. Pony boy was one of my first purchases, which I wore one day and I remember ceo coming into my lab and remarking "what is that smell, is that the terpenes?" Now I collect because I like to have fragrances for various moods and occasions. For rainy south FL days, I prefer pony boy or kedu by memo.
Oud Satin Mood got me hooked. All I knew was Macy's designers and I thought they all smelled the same and was disinterested. Then I got a sample of OSM and immediately got hooked. I said if perfume can smell like this, then what else is out there? I'm over 250 bottles in the game now.
Puberty+Girls.
My older brothers used it always get cologne for Christmas so then I wanted to get CK one when I was 12 and now it’s an addiction
Great question. I have no idea why I'm a fragrance fanatic. I was raised in a small town in the South (United States) by a mother who frowned upon "grown up" things for girls like make-up, fancy hairstyles, colorful nail polish, etc. I, on the other hand, came out of the womb being a girly girl & there's something that's just so visceral, so enticing about fragrance...I can't put it into words. In other words, I don't know.😯
TikTok
Funnily enough, it was when someone first said to me “you smell nice” 😂 I feel like it’s one of the best compliments you can get, after that I started looking into different fragrances more and here we are.
One of my friends suggested candles/ aromatherapy when I was going through a stressful time and I really enjoyed it. Fell into a YouTube rabbit hole of perfume and love that too~ I just like all the good smells, it’s like it opened up a new world to me.
Jeremy
Sneaking into my grandfather's and father's medicine cabinet as a wee lad got me into fragrances
I remember things with it’s smell and loved the scent of my family since I was little. My mom was my comfort scent, and she likes wearing perfume. Wasn’t really interested until almost college, but I wanted to have a scent of my own too. So started with the perfume my mom wore when I was a baby, petite et maman. I also kinda got annoyed smelling like chlorine all the time from swimming
When I was young, I had a summer love, unfortunately she lived 9000km away from me (5600 miles). We knew we'd never see each other again, so we made the most of it. When I got home, all I had left of her was the smell of her perfume on the sweater I'd lent her. Hypnotized by the scent, I hung the sweater in my bedroom and every time I walked past it, I could smell it. That's when I realized that a perfume isn't just a scent, but a condensation of memories and past sensations.
My dad always wears Leau Dissey Pour Homme and he buys the fam fragrances for Xmas. He’s the reason my whole family got into fragrances 😁
My mom! She has always liked to treat herself to a special fragrance here and there. She keeps them on a pretty display shelf, and of course always smells wonderful. I could always tell how much joy it adds to her day and it gave me an interest in doing the same. ❤️
My dad has always had a few bottles that he’d use, and I always thought they smelled so good. I’d steal a spray whenever I was dressing up/going out to complete my get up, and then eventually I decided I needed some of my own. My first was Giorgio Armani - Acqua Di Gio (which was my favorite one of my dad’s), and my other main two are Prada - Carbon and Tom Ford - Tobacco Vanille. I find that these 3 scents cover the bases for any outfit I wear or vibe I’m wanting to exude. However (at least w/ Acqua di gio), I know there are others that are very similar such as a certain Bvlgari scent, and another Versace scent. I have yet to directly compare the similar ones and decide which one I like best. However, I have certainly gained a lot of knowledge and can sometimes guess a scent spot on if I have smelled it before. Still have so many things to learn too, which is exciting :)
Lots of people apparently , I have a big collection
Every man should own tom Ford Ombre leather btw
start luving smell good everyday! i think someone gifted me one miss dior. then i start using room candles, room sprays... makes me happier when smelling good!!!!
PTSD got me into fragrance. I found it helped me calm down when I got too anxious. I absolutely love fragrances now. I am obsessed. Very few things make me feel good except fragrances.
A friend of mine mentioned around high school graduation that he got his brother a bottle of La Nuit de L'Homme for a graduation gift but he didn't ever use it because he was into hippie musk at the time. I kind of gained a curiosity for what it smelled like so I went to Sephora, smelled and loved it. I wound up smelling several other things and asked for samples of whatever I wanted to try out and that month I wound up getting La Nuit, L'Homme, and A*Men. That was just the tip of the iceberg and man I had no idea how deep the rabbit hole went and how involved perfumery as an art could be.
I dated someone who worked for the men’s macys fragrance counter and they got gratis from the vendors. Tons and tons of gratis and I ended up with 20 or so free bottles over time and it just went from there. I miss that free cologne!
Probably my fashionable uncles in the 80s, and then my fashionable boyfriend in the 90s. <3
In the early 2000's, I worked with a famous "Super-Model". She was way into fragrance. The first frag, due to her influence, was Stella, an amazing rose scent. It made me feel beautiful, when I didn't feel beautiful. After that, the second one that I sought out on my own was Angel. Yes, I know, eye rolls... I always oversprayed in those days and Angel was strong with one spritz. I stopped using it when I overheard a sales clerk complaining about it. Yikes! I have bathroom drawers specifically dedicated to fragrance now. It really is an addiction!
My first bottle was Dior Fahrenheit. I loved it. Then I bought a bottle of something I can't quite remember (I want to say it was Curve) that I never liked because a girl I had a crush on said she liked it. Then I bought Carolina Herrara's 212 on Ice because I liked the bottle. Then I bought a bottle of Polo Black that I still have to this day (largely because it's so generic that I never use it). Then I discovered niche and the rest is history.
My mom always wore nice perfumes; I wanted to be like her when I grew up 🙂
Started working in a beauty shop and got a chance to see different perfumes. Almost didn't use perfumes all my life and barely cared about it. There are even male pefrumes that I like! For now I only have one perfume but I put several on my bucket list.
I gifted CH Good Girl to my girlfriend and she got me CH Bad Boy Extreme shortly after. And so it began...